San Diego to La Paz Mexico

So we head out from San Diego Harbour at 4:00 pm on Nov 1, so that we can get out of all the traffic before it gets dark - this takes about an hour. The plan is to travel over night and be at Ensenada, Mexico bright and early in the morning so we can get a jump on clearing customs and then continue on our way south. Well we should have done our own planning (we let "Captain Phil" do it) as the jaunt from S.D. to Ensenada is only 8 hrs at our normal 8 knot speed, so in order not to be to Ensenada in the dark (not wise to enter Mexican ports in the dark - charting is not really good) we had to travel at 5 knots, most people can walk faster than that. Happily, the water is flat, the winds are calm and we have the light of a beautiful full moon. We try out "our" idea of shifts, Cindy 7:00pm to 9:00pm (so Glen can have a nap), Glen 9:00pm to 12:00 midnight, Cap Phil midnight to 3:00am, Cindy 3:00am to 6:00am (or when ever Glen came up). And because everybody has so much rest, Glen basically runs the boat for the rest of the day with Phil taking a turn for a short time. I love my shift time as I got to have both the beauty and serenity of the moon lit waters, with the boat softly swishing through the night and the glory of the dawning days. We seriously couldn't have asked for better traveling conditions for our whole 6/24 days of travel. We have been blessed and completly spoiled.
Clearing customs in Ensenada was quickly done, we hired the marina agent to take us down to the clearance office and within 1 hour we were back at the boat fueling for the rest of the journey. All of the books we have been reading suggest that the customs process will take one to two days, I think the agent idea sped things up. So off we go. Why are we traveling night and day and not stopping along the way??? Well a couple of reasons, we have a good weather window to get to the Sea of Cortez right now, there are really only a couple of places to stop on the outside on the way down and we also don't want to have a Captain hired to spend time holiday-ing (so we have to get to an airport asap to send him home). Glen did throw the brand new fishing rod out (not literally) several afternoons and finally we caught a dorado fish. After fishing salmon, there is not much sport in this type of fishing. Basically you drag it in and clunk it on the head. Done deal. Well - not so for our first time, seems the fish didn't want to be dead so once clunked and stunned, when we brought him into the boat, he decided to come back to life and trash around, causing great commotion. Captain Phil finally jumped on him to restrain it while Glen finished him off. (the fish). Again the lovely water conditions played in our favor as we set the fish cleanning table up on the back swim grid and I processed the fish. Dorado makes lovely sashimi and is fantastic on the BBQ. I guess we will be able to survive. We arrived in La Paz, Costa Baja Marina on Nov 6 about noon. La Paz is a nice city, more quiet than Cabo area. We have found the grocery store, which is like any back home (stupid books!!! - I have so much stockpiled food on board). There sure aren't many tourists here (yet?). Suprisingly, not even people on their boats, even in the downtown marinas. We tested our dive gear by going under the boat to clear the sea weed collected in the stabalizer arms, makes for lots of noise as you are traveling. So our diving skills are refreshed for when we head out to Isla Espiritu. We will be diving on some of the reefs and having some fun. Glen has flown back to Calgary today for a funeral (his nefew), he'll be back here on Sat. So I will keep a low profile, keep the boat shinny and swim at the lovely beach that we have access to. We have discovered that our attempts at Spanish - suck. Unless you pronounce the word exactly correct, the people look at you like you have four heads, so Glen has decided that he will just use sign language. Seems to work best. So for now - Adios!